Birth of the Republican Party
A hundred and fifty years ago today, delegates from every “free” (non-slavery) state in the Union converged on Philadelphia to select the new Republican party’s first presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The Musical Fund Hall, which housed the convention, could scarcely accommodate the 2,000 delegates and observers. The air in the hall was thick and muggy, and outside an overflow crowd stood in a light summer drizzle, eager for news about the proceedings.
Virtually everyone who was anyone in Northern politics was there. William H. Seward, the senator from New York, and Salmon P. Chase, the newly elected governor of Ohio, were both on hand, each politicking for the top spot on the ticket, as they would do again four years later at a much more famous convention in Chicago.
Rep. Joshua Giddings, a fiery antislavery radical from Ohio, was in attendance, as was Thaddeus Stevens, a once and future congressman from Pennsylvania, whose stern countenance and unflinching opposition to human bondage made him a national figure. Horace Greeley, the persnickety but influential editor of the New York Tribune, was also among the delegates, as were the future Vice Presidents Hannibal Hamlin and Henry Wilson, the future senators James G. Blaine and Zachariah Chandler, and Gideon Welles, a Connecticut Yankee who just a few short years later would join Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet as secretary of the Navy.
From the press gallery a reporter for The New York Times found that “the utmost enthusiasm prevailed in the Hall as the delegates were assembling. As many of the noted men of the country came late into the Hall, they were recognized and warmly cheered.” The assembled activists had a solemn purpose—“everything is managed with excessive and intense propriety,” a reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial wrote—and on the whole what struck attendees was the fervor of the moment. One observer thought the assemblage looked like a “Methodist conference, rather than a political convention.”
When the delegation from the embattled Kansas territory arrived to take its seats, the hall broke out in spontaneous cheers and applause. And little wonder. It was Kansas, after all, that had given birth to the new political party.
Throughout the 1830s and ’40s, American politics had been dominated by two political parties, the Whig and the Democratic, that disagreed on a host of issues concerning political economy. Debates over banks, tariffs, internal improvements, soft and hard currency, and workingmen’s rights largely defined the political discourse of that time, and for the most part the parties enjoyed strong support both North and South. By the late 1840s, however, there were signs that the system was under strain.
On the evening of Saturday, August 8, 1846, Rep. David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, rose on the House floor to introduce a controversial amendment to an appropriations bill stipulating that no territory won in the ongoing Mexican-American War would be opened to slavery. Wilmot’s “proviso” passed on a purely sectional (North vs. South) vote, though Southern strength in the Senate prevented it from becoming law. Astute observers understood the significance of the event: The great Whig and Democratic parties had failed, if only momentarily, to contain a burgeoning sectional conflict over slavery. “As if by magic,” noted a reporter for the Boston Whig, “it brought to a head the great question that is about to divide the American people.”
The debate over whether to permit or prohibit slavery in the Mexican territories threatened to realign politics on a sectional basis. Though politicians from both parties and both sections ironed out a series of agreements—the so-called Compromise of 1850—that seemed to put the issue to rest, subtle events were conspiring to weaken the Whig and Democratic parties’ hold over the electorate. In recent years the two parties had largely hashed out many of the key issues that had formerly divided them, so that by the early 1850s their candidates began to sound much more alike. All it would take to loosen the voters’ allegiances to the otherwise similar parties was a new, salient issue. And that issue was slavery.
In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which organized the Kansas and Nebraska territories in preparation for the construction of a transcontinental railroad and further westward expansion. At the insistence of Southern senators who initially balked at supporting the bill, Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois, the Democrat who authored the legislation, inserted a “popular sovereignty” provision allowing the residents of the two territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery.
Douglas knew this one detail would “raise a storm,” but he may have underestimated just how quickly that storm would become a political tornado. Kansas and Nebraska were part of the Louisiana purchase, and as such they fell under the provisions of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery above the 36’30” parallel. In one quick motion, Douglas and his Democratic colleagues had obliterated a longstanding arrangement between North and South and reintroduced the slavery question into American politics.
In the two years that followed, events in Kansas largely shattered the Democratic and Whig parties in the North. Popular sovereignty proved a joke, as Southerners flooded into Kansas and rigged a series of territorial elections and plebiscites. On May 19, 1856, after Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a long, winding antislavery speech about the “crime against Kansas,” a South Carolina congressman, Preston Brooks, savagely beat him with a metal-tipped cane, enraging much of the North and providing a groundswell of support for the Republicans, a new party that fused “anti-Nebraska” Democrats and Whigs.
Meeting less than a month later in Philadelphia, the convention delegates adopted a strong antislavery platform (David Wilmot, whose proviso had foreshadowed the crisis of the 1850s, chaired the platform committee). Calling for a ban on slavery in the Western territories, the Republicans forged a middle ground between hard-line, radical abolitionists and conservative supporters of law and order and union. Though delegates like Thaddeus Stevens and Joshua Giddings objected to slavery on the grounds that African-Americans were human beings deserving of full equality, most party members focused instead on slavery’s ruinous effects on Southern life, which they viewed as economically stagnant, socially retarded, and antidemocratic.
On the second day of the proceedings, when it became clear that neither Seward nor Chase enjoyed sufficient support to capture the new party’s presidential nomination, the convention tapped John C. Frémont, a famous Army explorer whose activities in California during the Bear Flag revolt had earned him national, though probably undeserved, acclaim. A son-in-law of the mercurial Missouri politician Thomas Hart Benton, Frémont had served a brief term in the Senate, where he joined other northern Democrats in opposing the westward spread of slavery.
For the vice presidential spot, Abraham Lincoln, a largely unknown former congressman from Illinois, enjoyed early support. But the delegates ultimately went with William Dayton, a former Whig Senator from New Jersey. Then, hoisting banners that read “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, Frémont,” the delegates closed the convention’s business and marched onward toward the fall election.
Frémont lost the election to the Democrat James Buchanan, but the new party performed exceptionally well and won strong representation in both houses as a stunning 83 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Looking forward to 1860, the Republicans knew that if they held the places where Frémont had prevailed and won any combination of two states among Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana, the White House would be theirs.
In Springfield, Illinois, a small group of political boosters took close note of the electoral map and laid plans for the next election.
Questions for “Birth of a Nation”Name:
1. Where was the first Republican National Convention held?
2. Who were some of the famous politicians trying to get nominated?
3. How many people were at the convention?
4. Why did people cheer when delegates from Kansas arrived?
5. In what areas did the Whigs and Democrats disagree?
6. What issue threatened to realign party politics?
7. Why were Kansas/Nebraska closed to slavery?
8. Why did Republicans adopt a strong anti-slavery platform?
9. Who received the Republican nomination? What was this man known for?
10. Who received the VP nomination?
11. What was their slogan?
12. Who won the election of 1856?